Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a production operator and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A Production Operator is liable for assisting with manufacturing, packaging and any other steps followed in the production line. This position handles most heavy equipment in their line of duty though it varies from one company to the other.

The essential functions of this post are operating equipment safely and efficiently for production processing, setting up the production materials and supplies before executing the job orders, inspecting equipment to identify any replacements, malfunctions and repairs, ensuring the computer are maintained in good and safe working condition, repairing and cleaning the machine when needed, providing assistance to junior operators in their assigned responsibilities, following safety steps and company policies for equipment operation, identifying and reporting unsafe operations to supervisors immediately.

Core Skills Required to be a Production Operator

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A production operator should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Storytelling:

Storytelling is a great social and cultural activity of sharing stories with an aim to educate, entertain, and instill moral values which are mostly used in the cultural oral storytelling events.

A Production Operator must learn the secret of inspiring and connecting with both the customers and staff at a reasonable level through the stories he shares that can be interpreted differently depending on the lens shared through.

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Critical Thinking:

Critical Thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally while understanding the logical connection between ideas in a reflective and independent thinking.

A Production Operator will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings do represent the entire picture while identifying, analyzing and solving problems by deducing consequences from what he knows and making use of the information gathered.

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Supervisory Skills:

Supervisory Skills is the ability to lead and manage people effectively in a difficult and challenging atmosphere in the day to day life.

A Production Operator must cultivate, develop and refine management and supervisory skills to strengthen the present as well as build the future of the business by becoming competent in such roles like problem-solving, communication, managing people, time management, leadership, planning, etc.

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Creativity:

Creativity is the skill of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality through the ability to perceive the world in new ways, find hidden patterns, make connections between unrelated phenomena and generate solutions.

A Production Operator should be able to think, then reproduce ideas and act on them to bring awareness of what was currently hidden and point to a new life that will progress the business to new heights.

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Adaptability:

Adaptability is the ability to cope with and adapt to unexpected situations in any environment and staying connected with a great attitude.

A Production Operator must shape the workplace with leadership skills that allow employees to adapt to the provided atmosphere and be able to give their best in the workplace while growing in their ability to become the best employees.

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Handling Stress:

Handling Stress is the skill to balance the requirements of the job and your abilities or available resources in performing it.

A Production Operator needs to creatively learn how to schedule work according to the abilities of different individuals to ensure a balance that will not put an unsustainable level of pressure on the employees and cause them to accumulate work related stress.

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Results Orientation:

Results Orientation is knowing and focusing on outstanding results and working hard to achieve them because they are significant.

A Production Operator must understand and make it clear to the employees how important results are and the competitive and results driven market that the company is facing while encouraging them to remain focused on the results that every project bears without fail.

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Goal and Objective Setting:

Goal and Objective Setting is the strategic plan that is set and laid down identifying how goals should be accomplished, by who and by what time.

A Production Operator must detect and schedule each employee's goals, strategy, and objectives and keep motivating them to ensure all of them are met within the set time bringing growth to both the company and the employee.

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Diversity Awareness:

Diversity Awareness is the understanding that people are different and unique in their particular way and respecting their uniqueness.

A Production Operator ought to successfully identify the various types of diversity presented in his company to be able to benefit from these individual differences in the hope of improving the success of his team and encourage the team members to become aware of these qualities and use them appropriately.

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Scheduling:

Scheduling is creating daily workflow charts that the employees are supposed to follow when working and submitting their projects.

A Production Operator must be dedicated to establishing and maintaining the schedule using either manual or technology methods to ensure it is always updated according to the tasks, the employees responsible or the time allocated to each task without fail or delay.

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Hard Skills Required to be a Production Operator

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A production operator should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.